December

Fox prints and deer pock the snow

over the grass where we danced.

Our picnic table hosts banquets of snow.

Canvas chairs tip white onto white.

Skeletal weeds poke through ice.

The fig bush bears a snow harvest.

Beyond the shiver of beach, crabs

have shuffled deep in the channel,

fish fled under ice, or south. I don't

adjust to this change of season, still

long for summer, as for you, utterly.

Then a hundred swans avalanche to the cove.